Today we bring you a guest post from my friend Brad Voigt, 15 year veteran of Young Life AND owner of Factory Media Network. Brad has some great thoughts to share from his own experiences as he found financial freedom and greater ministry satisfaction by turning "If" into "and". He's a bit of a one-man Charity Enterprise, putting together his marketing savvy, coaching ability, and ministry passion of reaching kids for Christ.

If you've had a full time role in the non-profit sector you've experienced this situation: You'd like a raise and you can have it IF you raise the money to cover it. "If" is the most frequent obstacle in the non-profit sector.

"We'd like to go build more wells for people in this country IF we can raise the funds."

"We'd like to update the technology in our office IF we can find the donor to support it."

"I'd like to go and feed the poor in this third world country IF I can raise the money to go."

"I'd like to start this job for this non-profit IF I can raise the funds to be hired."

Eventually, I got tired of IF after 14 years.

And one day it happened, I introduced myself to someone and I said, "I'm a non-profit director AND a business owner."

Do you know what it's like when you try to communicate to a dog and you say, "Let's go outside!" but all you get from the dog is a slight head tilt and zero change in body language? More often than not, that slight tilt of the head is what I get when I tell someone "And." It confuses people.

When I see the disorientation I pile it on, "And I'm a football coach. And I'm a woodworker. And I'm a writer." It's true, in the last year I've been paid for all these "And's".

Here's the question I have for you: Why would you allow your profitability or work satisfaction be limited to a single role?

We stand right on the brink of this single profession era coming to an end and this might be the best news someone in the non-profit sector can hear. I say this because when we discover a talent or skill that is profitable, and we combine it with permission from our organization to explore these gifts, we become more focused instead of distracted. What I have discovered is financial gain in another arena creates the freedom for me to focus on what I feel called to do.

Jeff Goins nails it in his book The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant To Do describing what he refers to as the Portfolio Life. Jeff writes,

The basic idea of a portfolio life is that instead of thinking of your work as a monolithic activity, what if you chose to see it as a the complex group of interests, passions, and activities it is? And what if instead of identifying with a job description, you began to see the whole mass of things you do as one portfolio of activity?

We're on the precipice of the portfolio life becoming the norm for everyone but we should really lean in if we consider ourselves part of the non-profit work force because what if we're more than non-profit employee like Jeff suggests? What if our actions or reach or resolve or employment wasn't limited by IF you can raise the funds. Could it be you owe it to yourself to investigate your profitability outside of a single non-profit paycheck so you can make the impact you feel called to make?

Melody Murray, co-founder of Joy Corps and JOYN Bags and recent immigrant from the US to Southeast Asia, shares her perspective on being a foreigner and the promise of Advent.

This Christmas season, I have been remembering that Jesus felt all these things too. He was born into a condition of homelessness. He spent part of his childhood as a refugee in a foreign country and his adulthood with “no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).

Every profession has its hazards. For mine, it’s lawyer jokes and requests for free legal advice. This blog contains neither, but it will provide a little education on the basic forms of corporations so you’ll sound smart when you call your own counsel.

Some states offer a larger array of options; this blog discusses the most popular entity choices including corporations, LLC, low-profit limited liability companies (L3Cs), and benefit corporations.

Anytime someone says, “I’m thinking of starting a nonprofit,” my immediate thought is to make sure I can’t talk them out of it.

As Dan Palotta points out in his semi-famous Ted Talk titled “The Way We Think about Charity is Dead Wrong”, charities/nonprofits face tremendous headwinds toward scalability. Palotta examined the number of organizations surpassing $50M in revenue since 1970, and found only 144 charities reached that level while 46,136 for-profit companies did.

Question: How much impact/financial return will I get from impact investing?

Answer: It depends.

Kingdom impact investing may be easiest to see in the context of poverty reduction and evangelism. But we have seen hundreds of companies tackling a wide range of issues through business models as diverse as bus seat manufacturing, hydroelectric power, software development, and a cattle feed lot. Likewise, the potential return for investors is equally varied.

Should I offer investors a SAFE or a convertible note? What’s the difference and is one always better than the other?

Convertible Note

A convertible note is a type of debt that has the right to convert into equity when a company hits an agreed-upon milestone, typically the next round of funding. If the milestone isn’t hit, the company owes the investors their original capital plus interest. Cite.

SAFE

A SAFE, or Simple Agreement for Future Equity, is “an agreement between an investor and a company that provides rights to the investor for future equity in the company similar to a warrant, except without determining a specific price per share at the time of the initial investment.” Cite

I’m training for the Kansas City Marathon to raise money for World Vision’s clean water initiative. It’s quite possibly the least efficient fundraising strategy I’ve ever tried. Considering the time involved in training, recovery and fundraising it feels like I’ve raised about 25 cents per hour. Fortunately, I don’t think that’s the way we’re supposed to measure success.

I would do the running anyway because I love it and it keeps me mentally and physically healthy. Raising money gives the running even more meaning.

Whether we realize it or not, the degree of influence, and the acceleration of that influence, that key digital gatekeepers are having in our lives and those around the world is exceptional. Big data aggregators with democratically charged algorithms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple are wielding powerful influence in how we think, where our attention is directed, how we search for the truth, and who has sway in our lives. The question is, where are we going with all this? who's taking us there? And how will this affect our societies, families, and the generations that follow?

I've spent many sleepless nights praying and wishing I could just get some rest. Recently we met Gary Brown, CEO of Spiritual Sleep Therapy and I wanted to share his story on our blog. Here it is in his words. …

One third of Americans (82M people) struggle with insomnia and 15% (36M+) struggle every night, two-thirds of whom are women. Spiritual Sleep Therapy (SST) is the first company to produce sleep sessions that use the most effective elements of cognitive behavioral therapy relaxation techniques combined with the power of God’s Word to help those who struggle with insomnia.

An enterprise whose primary positive impact on the world happens through the way business is conducted. Its leadership, being rooted in Christ, follows the Spirit with intentionality for how they can participate in God's transformational work in the lives of employees, vendors, & customers while creating sustainable value. Read more and discover best practices.

The Verdant leadership team has spent a great deal of time putting together their framework for how they cultivate new opportunities. Starting with small explorations, they then perform a standard set of rigorous tests before committing in a significant way.

Having spent a week with the team on the ground as an outside observer, we noted there are three key drivers of success…